Sandsting's torpedo mode is... torpedo-shaped, but it's pretty obviously his scorpion mode "compressed". I mean, you can see the legs on the side, the stinger up top, and the claws snapped together to make the front of the torpedo. There really isn't anything that covers up his scorpion parts. The color scheme is mostly a very dark purple with some glitter mixed in to make it look semi-metallic, along with a fairly light green. Both colors go extremely well together, as not only do purple and green just go together generally, but having such a dark color against such a light color looks quite nice. There's also some silver paint near the front, where the claws come together. It's a decent shade, but I think a lighter color-- like, say the green but in paint form-- might've worked a bit better to give some more contrast to that relatively large dark area. As far as mold detailing, the front section of this mode has fairly minimal detailing to give the front of the torpedo a bit more of an "aerodynamic" look, but behind that there's a pretty good amount of detail-- certainly more than the average RID2015 toy. You've got segmented areas that can look like either armor plating or a carapace, depending upon which mode he's in; circular "pivot points" where joints would be if this was a larger/more expensive and intricate toy; and even the RID2015-usual trio of diagonal divots on the sides of the main body. There's also even a little gun molded onto the tip of the stinger.
    To transform Sandsting to robot mode, pry his little claw pieces apart and the legs slide out and the tail slides up all on their own. As I mentioned earlier, the torpedo mode is just this mode but more "compact", so there's not a whole lot new visually here. The main new stuff are the legs and head. The legs have more circular "joints" molded into the mid-point of each of the six legs, and the increased visual amount of green helps make this mode look more visually interesting than the torpedo mode. (The legs are actually connected to the main body on the top AND bottom so they aren't too delicate.) The revealed head is more robotic human-like than scorpion-like; there are little side mandibles molded in, but otherwise Sandsting's got two eyes (painted red, with a nice red line that goes from the eyes to the back of the head) and a normal mouth. All in all this mode looks pretty cool, but unfortunately like most Minicons he can't move at all; moving the claws or tail will start to convert him back into torpedo mode. Like most Mini-Cons, Sandsting has several transparent armor pieces that can fit into various pegs and slot holes to give him a cool look and a bit more play value. Sandsting's armor pieces are violet, which complement his dark purple quite nicely while being a bit lighter. That said, I wish they were even a bit LIGHTER to provide more contrast, but they're still pretty cool. For starters, Sandsting's got an aerodynamic mask that goes over his head and looks near-demonic given how evil it looks. There's two pieces that go on his claws that really really look like the halves of a shark head, which is what they are for the Wave 2 bonus figure... which works there, but here they're definitely the weakest of his armor bits. He's got two little "wing" bits that peg in under the rear portion of each claw, and which are covered in little "bubble" details... I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to represent. Sandsting also has the same kind of detailing on one end of the armor piece that goes on the end of his stinger, which also adds a dual-gun to the end of his tail. Finally, there's two large blade pieces that stick on the sides of his tail to give him some slice 'n dice potential. All in all, they really look neat, and they all can store in torpedo mode as well.
    Sandsting has an awesome scorpion mode, a fairly nice color scheme, and some really cool armor pieces, but this comes at the price of a very weak torpedo mode, which is far too obviously his scorpion mode just compressed in some. If you want Mini-Cons for Fracture that just have cool creature modes, this is right up your alley, but if you want some minions that are more convincing torpedos for Fracture to fire, this is one of the weakest.
 

Review by Beastbot

Back to Robots in Disguise (2015) Index